Target practice is a common training exercise for archers and marksmen. Specifically, it is well known that firearm users regularly practice their shooting skills for a variety of self-defense, hunting, professional, competitive or recreational reasons. Similarly, archers often engage in target practice to sharpen their bow skills.
Accordingly, a wide variety of temporary, reusable or replaceable targets have been developed as it will be readily understood that a target will necessarily be destroyed by repeated and successful target practice involving firearms or other projectile firing weapons (for example, cross bows, compound bows and long bows). Therefore, any suitable practice target must, at an absolute minimum, be relatively cost-effective to manufacture.
For example, simple paper targets cost very little to manufacture and are quite easy to replace. However, such targets are 2-dimensional, offer very little illusion of reality and do not permit the incorporation of other training exercises (such as non-target practice related activities such as hand-to-hand combat or perpetrator restraint) that could be employed with a more realistic, 3-dimensional target.
Moreover, known three-dimensional targets are not necessarily responsive or readily collapsible in that such known targets do not readily replicate the experience of successfully executing an ultimately disabling (i.e. a “kill”) shot. In other words, with traditional three-dimensional foam targets, a target shot that hits an extremity of the target is not clearly distinguishable from a target that hits a central area of the target despite the fact that, as will be readily understood by the skilled person, in practical reality the latter type of shots typically are far more effective than the former type of shots.
Accordingly, there is need for an economical, easy to manufacture and assemble, modular, collapsible, responsive and realistic target for use in a wide variety of target training activities.